While the Pentagon complains about massive budget cuts, the U.S. Coast Guard — the smallest and sometimes overlooked arm of the armed forces — has been faring fairly well, moneywise.

“It’s a steady state for us,” said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp, in a recent interview in San Diego. “We’re not doing too badly right now. We haven’t seen any major reductions.”

The Coast Guard’s 2013 discretionary budget was proposed at $8.3 billion. That’s slightly less than the $8.6 billion it got in 2012, but Papp said that Congress has indicated in draft legislation that it will add more money, as it has in the past.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Coast Guard’s budget has ballooned from $4.5 billion in 2002, as America worried anew about the security of its coasts.

But the sequester — the $1.2 trillion budget ax set to fall March 1 unless Congress decides otherwise — is a wild card.

The sequester would take $600 billion from defense and $600 billion from nondefense pocketbooks over the next decade. For the Defense Department’s $550 billion base budget, that’s a roughly 10 percent hit each year.

As a non-Pentagon service, how the Coast Guard will be affected is an open question.

Boatswain's mate Cale Silva pulls a fast boat into a turn after leaving the Coast Guard cutter Boutwell during a drill. The cutter returned recently from an anti-drug deployment to South America.
— John Gastaldo

Boatswain's mate Cale Silva pulls a fast boat into a turn after leaving the Coast Guard cutter Boutwell during a drill. The cutter returned recently from an anti-drug deployment to South America.
— John Gastaldo

Papp says he doesn’t know the answer.

“I haven’t been given the rules yet,” he said. “We’ve received no guidance on what our cuts will be. So, as a good sailor, if I’m going out into the ocean and I don’t know what the weather’s going to be, I make estimates and predictions. My staff is working on various scenarios and various cuts if it comes to fruition.”

The commandant, who served most of his career on Coast Guard cutters, said there’s potential for reductions that would affect the cutters, patrol craft and search helicopters working out of San Diego Bay.

“When you see boats and planes out there, some of time they are doing missions, but a lot of times they are doing training. All of it depends on money — for fuel and to send people to schools,” Papp said.

“That’s what I fear. That one of the things we might have to look at is reducing fuel expenditures and reducing travel costs that would prevent us from keeping our people trained to the level they have to be.”

The Navy is already there. Last month it instituted a hiring freeze and announced that all nonessential travel would be canceled. Last week, the Navy said the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman will not deploy as expected this year because of budget concerns.

Papp said the Coast Guard will protect its core work: search and rescue and security of ports such as San Diego.

“Those two are jobs No. 1,” he said.

With .40 caliber Sig-Sauer’s strapped to their thighs, the law enforcement boarding team prepped during a drill aboard the Boutwell.

With .40 caliber Sig-Sauer’s strapped to their thighs, the law enforcement boarding team prepped during a drill aboard the Boutwell.

The Coast Guard, which has 43,000 active-duty service members, stations 930 people in San Diego.

The local inventory of hardware includes two 378-foot cutters that transferred to San Diego in 2011, a handful of 110-foot and 87-foot patrol boats and several small, fast security vessels that escort Navy ships in and out of the bay.